A Quickie Whirl Around Our Favorite Restaurants

Emphasis on what is affordable on a journalist’s salary

BY: CHUCK WAGON

Wanna drink for a buck? That’s $1 USD, Bunky. Cabo is cheap but not so cheap that they have one-peso beer! That’s OK, a buck a beer is just fine with us. When you want to drink for next to nothing, there are a few places you can go. On the marina, there’s Solomon’s Landing, which offers XX amber and lager for $1 if you sit at the bar. (You can’t mix with the big bucks paying customers). They also have Smirnoff, Bacardi and El Charro tequila for $1, and red or white wine for $2, but that wine is the kind that doesn’t even get better by the third glass. Spring for the six buck wine if you can, or stick to the beer.

A few blocks up from the marina on Vicente Guerrero, a few doors down from Bajo La Luna, is Scabo. It’s one of the newer places in town, having been open only a few months. They offer $1 Corona and Pacifico, and $1 tequila shots too. You can sit at the bar on one of the swing seats. And another downtown spot offering $1 beer is Sammy G’s, the small burger joint across from Siesta Suites. It’s part of their happy hour special from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. every day.

Editor’s note: This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the places in Cabo offering $1 beer specials, just a few that we like. So don’t get pissy if we left off your favorite watering hole.

Check out these summer specials While you’re at the bar at Solomon’s enjoying your cheap drinks, check out their cheap eats. They’re offering a summer bar menu that features nine different dishes – everything from blackened tuna to buffalo wings to ravioli – all for $4 or less! And they’re not dinky, three-bite portions either.

Hooliganz Corner Bar is offering similar specials, from 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. every day. For about $3.50 you can get fries, chicken fingers, calamari, Ceasar salad or nachos. They also have Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Smirnoff and draft beer about $1. Added bonus: Hooliganz, which is in downtown Cabo on the corner of Lazaro Cardenas and Mariano Matamoros, is one of the few places that’s completely enclosed so you can fully enjoy the air conditioning.

And if you want to class it up a bit, Bajo La Luna is offering a three-course fixed price menu for the summer. For less than $20 you can get a soup, entrée and dessert. The entrees include coconut chicken breast, shrimp and chicken skewers, grilled fish, pesto linguine or fettucine alfredo with chicken or baby back ribs. The special is available until September 18, when Bajo will close for two weeks.

Restaurants helping animalsSpeaking of Bajo La Luna, it’s now officially the drop off point for the Cabo pet food bank. You might remember, (pay attention!) our story a few issues back about the pet food bank, started by local animal lover John Villegas, whose first location is at C.J.’s Deli in San Jose. You can drop off donations of pet food, collars/leashes, cleaning supplies and any other pet supplies at either place.

You can also help the animals by heading over to Wicked Pizza and ordering a pie. Every Tuesday, they will make a donation to El Ranchito for every pizza they sell. They donate $1 from every small, $2 from every medium and $3 from every large. Might as well spring for the large, you know you’ll eat the whole thing.

Feel like some Thai food? That’s right, we finally have a Thai restaurant in Cabo. Blue Thai Martini Bar, located in Plaza Bonita, where Mint Jungle used to be, opened in July. The menu is small, but it offers all the traditional Thai favorites: lettuce wraps, fresh basil rolls, pho (a Thai version of chicken noodle soup), chicken coconut soup, pad thai and two types of curry.

On the martini side, you have your standard martinis and some more unique flavor options like jalepeno, tamarind, salted caramel, espresso and cucumber.

And if you’re a local, be sure to ask for a Blue Thai VIP card so you can get special food and drink discounts.

The Office is closedDon’t panic, it’s not closed for good. This Cabo staple closes every year at this time. They’ll be open again on October 1. Another popular Medano restaurant, Edith’s is also closed for now; they open again on September 30. Coinky dink? No, Edith owns both restaurants.

More A/C. That’s always a good thing. Vagabundos bar and restaurant on the fourlane, inside the trailer park which is across the highway from WalMart, has enclosed the place for the summer. Joe de la Barbolla and his new partner even sprang for a couple of splits and it’s almost Artic in there now. Very good food, Mexican, seafood and American comfort food at reasonable prices. Hey! You’re in a trailer park, just how crazy with the prices can they get? It’s a fun place, with Joe greeting and usually sitting with everyone who stumbles in.

Don’t forget Tiki! Tiki, right on the malecon, is cheap, fast, and good. We like their breakfast, which is a steal for sitting marina side in the high rent district. It’s owned by Moises, the brother of George, who owns and runs Baja Cantina next door, but Tiki has way better food and service. The brothers grew up in the restaurant business on Catalina Island in California. We vote for Tiki for breakfast.

Next issue we will try to get up to San Jose and evaluate some of the best that town offers. For now, we only know CJ’s Deli cause that’s where we usually go when we’re up there. It’s really, good, as the owner is a retired chef from, well, maybe the Yukon, it’s some godawful place in the tundra. Owner George Adams is Canadian and the place is littered with Canadians, so does that kind of describe the prices?